


Even Later

by Sanj



Category: Into the Woods - Sondheim/Lapine
Genre: Gen, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-01
Updated: 2006-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-02 15:42:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanj/pseuds/Sanj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The strong are supposed to survive," he told his wife's shade. "It was supposed to have been you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Later

"Two days ago I was a baker," he said to himself, "and I had a wife, and a house, and a child."

_You've still got the child_, she said in his mind. _It **is** what we went after. We didn't ask to have a healthy child, a thriving business, and for both of us to die when we had great-grandchildren._

"I will remember to be very specific in the future," he told his wife's shade, "as soon as the next witch shows up next door." He considered this. "My money's on the princess' stepmother."

_No bet,_ his wife said, and he wondered if she's ever smiled like that when she was alive. When he'd had a chance to catch it with a kiss.

He looked away abruptly and watched Jack hammering on the new frame for the addition. As the princess sanded some wood he'd planed earlier. "By the way," he told the spirit, "you thought we needed more room before? Now we're housing the entire village."

_Well, there's not that much left of it._ She seemed to shrug. _You'll be fine. And they're probably the best of the lot, anyway. Look over there._

He looked in the correct direction even before he realized she wasn't pointing. He saw his son; the girl had picked him up and was singing a rhyme to him in her clear voice. A bloodthirsty little motherling in a cloak of wolfskins, minding the child -- just as his wife had said she could do.

Everything had always been just as his wife had said it would be. But now this.

"The strong are supposed to survive," he said. "It was supposed to have been you."

_I have no idea what I'd have done with your princess,_ she said wryly.

"Suppose it had been the prince?" he teased.

He could almost taste her dislike. _Him you're better off without,_ she said with conviction. _Stick with what you've got._

He felt like there was a story there, but he knew the dead -- especially his wife -- told no lies. So he didn't ask. "I loved you, you know," he said. "We weren't either of us that good at showing it. I'm sorry about that. I really am."

_It's like the wishes,_ she said. _Just be clearer, next time. Say everything._

The baker, whose house was being rebuilt (and expanded), looked at the young man Jack, actually focused on the task in front of him. He watched the girl come down the hill with the child in her arms, holding the babe as gently as she would a golden egg. And then he looked a long time at the princess, who wasn't a princess anymore.

When he turned back to the fleeting image of his wife, she was gone. He wondered how long it would be before she returned -- or if she would at all. Half of him wanted to chase off into the mist until he found her.

And half of him, not.

It was that half of him that went and calmed the child, who was crying for milk. That half of him who smiled at the princess. She was singing to herself as she sanded the wood of a shattered hazel tree.

**Author's Note:**

> One of my favorite memories of Christmas 2005 will always be me sitting in chat on December 24th, having roundly resolved _not_ to pinch-hit, and seeing the gallant elyn grabbing at 11:45 PM for a story based in My. Favorite. Musical. Ever.
> 
> Half an hour later, and with Melina's patient offices as late-night beta, I'd come up with a little something for Sabine. And had more fun doing that than I had all Christmas day. Did I mention I love Yuletide?


End file.
